Petition to School Boards to Teach Reconstruction

Schools have the responsibility to teach the true history of the U.S and the world.

I am a college professor and a parent of three school-age children. I firmly believe as an educator, a parent, and an American citizen, that our children need to learn of the aftermath of the Civil War. The opportunities that opened up to newly emancipated Blacks--all the way into Congress!, and the better society that might have been. And the ugly backlash that ensued once the Union soldiers were withdrawn from the South. Reconstruction is a key chapter of America's divided history on race--both the good side and the ugly one. We can't come to terms with who we are today, unless we learn in detail how this cognitive dissonance has played out, from 1619 through to 2021.

I am a teacher and we need to teach the truth to students so they can become informed citizens.

We need to build our young people's knowledge and critical thinking skills so that they understand the impacts and consequences of the defeat of reconstruction and to help create a new generation of activists committed to fighting White Supremacy.

My research of K-12 and undergraduate courses revealed limited to one paragraph or non-existent to one of USA largest migrations of human assets.

Teaching about reconstruction gives us powerful examples of how people collaborated to make change towards justice in our country, which can help guide us as we work for justice in the future.

Thank YOU! This is important work.

For well over a century in most schools in our nation Reconstruction was little more than a passing footnote to the aftermath of the Civil War. Even that was used as racist propaganda based on the book the Klansman & the movie Birth of A Nation rather than factual history. Those lies were the basis for the rationale of of the violent oppression of the Jim Crow era and its present extension known as the New Jim Crow Era. Outside of Slavery itself, the destruction of Reconstruction was the largest mistake our country ever made. We wasted the best opportunity to right the wrongs of slavery and instead allowed slavery to continue under a different fictious name of separate but equal. That allowed racism to spread like an insidious cancer through the very fabric of our nation therefore invalidate the very premise of our society i.e. Democracy. To rectify that damage, the public education system must change from being a an enabler to the perpetuation of racism, to an ally, we can trust, to help rid this evil of racism from our country. Only then will Ametica even begin to fulfill its proclamation that ALL people are created equal & have the equal rights to the pursuit of happiness.

Americans' ignorance of the complete history of this country causes harm to marginalized people, especially Black and Indigenous people. As a retired educator, I feel that we cannot keep this history from our students. It is educational malpractice.